Hello again and welcome to St. Mark’s. As we begin to move into Holy Week, I wanted to take a few seconds just to tell you about some of the things that are going on in our family community in the coming days. But let’s start of with last week. Last Friday we had our first Stations of the Cross for Lent, and instead of using traditional images of the stations, we used images from the current Ukraine war. It was an online event, and I found it extremely moving as we reflected both on Christ’s journey towards the cross, but also seeing how that layers into our world today and the crisis and the war that we see in Ukraine. I encourage you to join our Facebook page (or our YouTube page) and to go back to last Friday, and you can see a recording of those stations; some really poignant questions, and a really great way as we start our thinking as we continue on our own journey towards the cross.
Stations continue this evening, when we have our life Stations of the Cross, we’ll be leaving St. Mark’s and going into the City Heights community. If you would like to join us for this service, please be at the church at 5 o’clock (editor’s note: at 5:15 p.m. with departure scheduled for 5:30 p.m.). All are welcome!
And then we enter into Holy Week. On Sunday, we have our Palm Sunday procession, again into the City Heights community and then continuing on into church as well at 10:15 a.m. as the normal time.
On (Maundy) Thursday, we will have an online, virtual feet washing and shared agapé meal. This service has been really meaningful over the last couple of years, and so we hope you can join us for that.
Then on (Good) Friday, we will have traditional noonday prayers in the church at midday, and in then in the evening we will be joining with our ecumenical partners at St. Luke’s with St. Matthew’s and also Rejoice Church as we do a combined Good Friday liturgy.
On Saturday, our Easter Vigil is with St. Luke’s and St. Matthew’s, at St. Matthew’s in Chula Vista (editor’s note: St. Matthew’s in National City), and then on Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord at 10:15 a.m. at St. Mark’s.
Our lives as I said are so busy, and I hope you take this upcoming Holy Week as a time to slow down. Think about your own journey towards the cross. Wherever you are in your journey of faith, you are welcome at St. Mark’s in all that we do, no matter what baggage, no matter what questions, no matter where you are, you will always be welcome, and I hope you will join us. Hope to see you soon. Bye, bye.
Fr. Richard+